With the ripple effects of the global financial crisis of 2008 exhibiting enduring rifts in the global economy to date, an assessment of the crisis as being rooted in both market and regulatory failure sheds light on the significance and the severity of the challenges cross-border financial capitalism presents nation states with in the wake of globalization. As externalities increase, the threats the unprecedented interdependence and instability of the modern financial system pose are unlikely to recede; on the contrary, they are bound to
become more pressing. This is of considerable significance for financial governance, implying that sovereign nation states – formally legitimized to conduct regulatory functions – must construct robust cross-border structures to cope with the challenges of governing an inherently crisis-prone system.
In an attempt to address the underlying shortcomings exposed by the crisis – among them that the regulatory and supervisory architecture was not commensurate with the complexity and sophistication of financial markets – the European Union embarked on an ambitious reform path. The potential capacity of European integration in this regard, though central in the academic debate, has yet to be analyzed systematically with respect to systemic risk in terms of both its systemic qualities and political embeddedness. Drawing on a refined definition thereof set out by Willke et al. (2013), this research aims to shed light on how these themes resonate in the European context to inform the critical analysis of
conducted reforms. Based on the assumption that cross-border finance requires integrated governance schemes to ensure its integrity and efficacy, the central goals are to (i) assess both systemic-risk related reform measures and the challenges they are confronted with, and (ii) illuminate the significance of reform, while underpinning the case for enhanced integration.
Drawing on a broad theoretical framework combining insights from various EU integration theories to trace the rationale and assess the potential and significance of supranational integration, and constructing an analytical framework within which to assess the order-, legitimacy- and expertise-related challenges current structures are confronted with, i.e. factors inhibiting governance capacity, the research concludes that though substantive reforms have largely failed to address the core systemic issues exposed by the crisis, there has indeed been substantial progress in terms of the reform of the institutional governance
architecture at the European level. While monumental challenges remain, it would be premature to discredit the response in its entirety. The analysis highlights the European Union’s remarkable capacity to adjust, with institutional responses essentially at the boundaries of legal and political feasibility. Given what is at stake, however, it contends that – with a view to future challenges – supranational governance regimes remain short of optimal scope and must be strengthened to forestall the gradual erosion of governance capacity vis-à-vis an increasingly interdependent and fragile financial system.

Today, transportation is a central element of a society’s welfare in terms of economic, political and social success. It creates jobs, allows international cooperation between firms and countries, contributes to firms’ productivity, and enables social participation and interaction. It has become an essential intermediate. Consequently, changes in transportation affect many more sectors. Therefore, transportation of goods and persons has been growing immensely within the past decades. Against this background, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) gain importance in improving and changing transport. Technology can cover all modes (e.g. advanced driving systems, cooperative vehicle systems as vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, or mobile and multimodal information and ticketing systems). The deployment of ITS substantially changes our transportation system. These changes concern several elements and stakeholders of mobility, e.g. infrastructure, technology, users, providers, public institutions, or regulatory frameworks. Up to now, research on ITS strongly focused on technical aspects, i.e. technical development and feasibility. However, these aspects can only represent part of a comprehensive analysis of ITS. This dissertation gives systematic analysis of elements that in the end have a strong impact on the successful market introduction of ITS. It discusses different aspects of intelligent transportation systems providing a view on the framework conditions for intelligent transportation systems. This work, hereby, focuses on passenger transportation. It shows that the successful deployment of ITS requires multiple actors. Each of them can positively or negatively influence the success of ITS-deployment. This work specifically analyses the investment decisions of public authorities on the example of socio-economic cost-benefit analysis, the users’ willingness to accept a multimodal information and ticketing system and its impact on modal choice, and finally the municipalities’ role in providing mobility for specific user groups on the example of immigrants showing the potential and limitations of ITS. The work picks up research questions that have not been addressed before and contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay of ITS as a technology and the society.